Weber Working on a JBL D130 Type Speaker!

Andrew Buhler · Post by **Andrew Buhler** » 20 Dec 2004 8:20 am

Weber alreay produces the California type speaker, but he just announced on the Fender Forum that he is working on a D130 type clone to be in production by the summer. Great news!

To quote:

"I've been needing to do 4" (voice coil) speakers for a long time, but was reluctant to finish the development because I wasn't sure we would sell any. For the past 2 to 3 years, I have been buying D130's on ebay and refurbishing them for our customers. Now they are getting harder to get but the requests keep increasing.

So, I have started working on the 15" again. As before, I am going to call it the HG15, (and HG12 if we do the 12"), in honor of Harvey Gerst, who worked at JBL and convinced Fender and JBL to get together.

I hope to have something by summer if the prototypes work well and are reliable. The biggest problem I have right now is that many of our customers wanting that kind of speaker are pedal steel players and they have 200 and 400 watt amps. So, I'm considering a tradional model and a high power model.

If I do this thing right, the price will be around $200."

Brad Sarno · Post by **Brad Sarno** » 20 Dec 2004 8:57 am

Yee Haa!!!

Brad Sarno

David Doggett · Post by **David Doggett** » 20 Dec 2004 10:34 am

I hope they are made in both 4 ohm and 8 ohm models.

Aaron Schiff · Post by **Aaron Schiff** » 20 Dec 2004 12:19 pm

I believe that I read somewhere that Ted Weber had been involved in the design of the Eminence speaker that is in the Steel King. His quality is so good and price so reasonable for guitar speakers that I would be very excited if he decided to expand his horizons a bit more.

Joe Alterio · Post by **Joe Alterio** » 20 Dec 2004 1:57 pm

Ted had no involvement with the Steel King speaker development. I have had many conversations with him about this speaker....hopefully, it was partly my tugging at his shirt that got him to wanting to build a speaker available to the general public.

Joe

Jon Light (deceased) · Post by **Jon Light (deceased)** » 20 Dec 2004 2:11 pm

Hey Joe--from buying several speakers from Weber and from reading the Weber BB pretty regularly for quite a while I get an impression of Ted Weber as a real decent guy. What's he like up close & personal?

Andy Zynda · Post by **Andy Zynda** » 20 Dec 2004 3:07 pm

Even better than what you think so far. Ted is one hell of a great guy.
And his products are top shelf, and then some, without the boutique prices.
-andy-

Joe Alterio · Post by **Joe Alterio** » 21 Dec 2004 5:42 am

Ted is a great guy, and definitely not a speaker "snob" as you might expect of someone who builds these. He's very eager to understand the needs of his users.

He's asked me a couple of times why any pedal steeler would need 200 - 300 watts of power....

I always have questions as to how speakers work (I'm not very good when it comes to electronics) and he's always taken time to try to explain things in terms I can understand....

I actually live about 45 minutes from his shop. He has done a recone on my JBL K130 for me recently, and did a fantastic job, creating a voice coil that replicated the original (since they aren't made anymore). And his normal recone price is $65.....much less than anyone else, but with twice as much time and expertise put in. Plus, I got a tour of the facilities when I went there....who'd have thought so much stuff went in to a speaker!

Joe

Daniel Vorp · Post by **Daniel Vorp** » 21 Dec 2004 6:15 am

I would love to have an 8 ohm D130 type speaker for my Webb. It's a newer Webb with the very heavy E130. It sounds great but I would be very keen on the idea of trying this new speaker should it become a reality.